Review

Reviewed Work(s): Josquin by David Fallows

Review by: Sean Gallagher
Source: Early Music History , 2010, Vol. 29 (2010), pp. 344-350
Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40800915

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 Reviews

attractive Greek music fount of Hagel's own devising. Our understanding

is much enlarged by his work.49
Leotranc Holtord-Strevens
Oxford
Email: aulus@gellius.demon.co.uk

David Fallows, Josquin. Turnhout, Centre d'Études Supérieures de la

Renaissance, Brepols, 2009. xvii + 522 pp. ISBN 978-2-503-53065-9.
doi:10.1017/S0261 127910000161

As a result of archival discoveries that began in the 1 990s, much of what

we thought we knew about Josquin's career has recently been upended.
Among many other changes, documents indicating an extended period of
service in Milan beginning in 1459 - long considered the earliest record of
the composer - have been shown to refer not to our Josquin, but rather to
two other musicians called Juschinus/Judochus, whose careers in Milan
can be traced in some detail. At a stroke some twenty years of the
composer's biography evaporated. This also called into question when and
where Josquin composed many of his works, and, by extension, required
a reassessment of his role in broader compositional developments that
occurred in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Coming to terms with this and other aspects of the new biographical
picture is no mean feat. David Fallows deserves our gratitude and
admiration for addressing these issues directly. At over 500 pages, his study
of Josquin's life and works makes a huge contribution. Fallows provides a
persuasive narrative that takes account of the new documentary findings
and their many implications.1 The obstacles are considerable. Despite
Josquin's stature as the most renowned composer of his time, there is what
Fallows rightly calls 'the desperately thin documentation of his life', even
including the recent discoveries. This is not just a matter of gaps in the
record of his career, numerous and maddening as these are, but also the
fact that so many of the documents we do possess are suggestive rather
than explicit, and thus invite a range of (often conflicting) interpretations.

49 Hagel's English retains a few infelicities and a few Germanisms: the worst respective instances
occur on p. 406, where in two consecutive sentences 'supplanted' appears to be used for
'substituted' and 'must not' for 'need not'. At p. 66, 1. 4 up, 'Hyper'- should be 'Hypo-'; p. 105,
1. 3: clearer would have been 'the lowest string becomes the functional mésë' There are indexes
of ancient sources and of personal names (none later than Boethius), but unaccountably and
inexcusably not of subjects.
1 Remarkably, this is the first such book on Josquin to appear in English. The Josquin Companion,
ed. Richard Sherr (Oxford, 2000), though different in its objectives and the work of many
hands, is the only recent publication comparable in scope. Its excellent essays, to which Fallows
often has occasion to refer, take account of changes in Josquin's biography that had emerged
by the late 1990s.

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 Reviews

Not unrelated to this paucity of biographical detail are ongoing debates

about the chronology and authenticity of many of the works. The earliest
surviving copies ofjosquin's music date from the 1480s and 1490s, decades
that saw the beginnings of fundamental changes in polyphonic compos-
ition. The roots of those changes continue to be investigated, but they
make the identification and chronology ofjosquin's works issues of central
importance for our understanding of European music in the decades
around 1500.

Matters of chronology figure prominently in Fallows's book. His twelve

chapters are essentially biographical in orientation, tracking Josquin from
his origins in Hainaut through to his final years as provost at the collegiate
church of Notre Dame in Condé, with each chapter organised around a
place the composer is known (or is proposed) to have been active. Whereas
in Fallows's earlier book on Guillaume Du Fay there were chapters
devoted to individual genres, here each chapter contains numerous
subsections that interweave biographical and music analytical material.
This structure allows him to zero in on specific works, and his perceptive
comments often illuminate features that have previously gone unnoticed.
It also allows him room, when needed, to make a case for dating a work
to a particular period in Josquin's career. A number of these datings will
be controversial, and so it is helpful that Fallows has structured the book
so that his chronological arguments are juxtaposed with discussions of the
relevant contextual and documentary material.
In an article published in 1999 Fallows offered a first attempt at a new
chronology of the works.2 Based on the biography as it then appeared, he
posited a birthdate in the mid- 1450s and a composing career of only about
forty years (from the late 1470s to c. 1510-12), rather than sixty, as had
previously seemed the case. He further proposed a division of the works
that suggested Josquin had focused on particular genres at different points
in his life, with many of the three- and four-voice songs, the famous Ave
Maria . . . virgo serena and the Missa Uami Baudichon all composed in the late
1470s; 'almost all' the long motets and motet cycles from the 1480s; the
five masses published in Petrucci's 1502 Misse Josquin from the 1490s, with
the remaining masses being from 'about 1502 to 1512'; and most all of the
five- and six-voice motets (excepting the earlier Illibata Dei virgo nutrix and
Nymphes des bois) composed in the first decade of the sixteenth century.
Much of this chronology is retained in the book. But a fascinating new
document discovered since his 1999 article has now prompted him to
move the beginnings ofjosquin's compositional activity back to the early

2 David Fallows, 'Approaching a New Chronology for Josquin: An Interim Report', Schweizer
Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, 19 (1999), pp. 131-50.

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 Reviews

1470s. Of particular significance for Fallows's narrative is that this

document appears to establish the young Josquin's connections to
Cambrai and possibly to the circle around Du Fay. This document from
the church of St-Géry in Cambrai mentions a payment in 1466 to one
'Gossequin de Condet' upon his ceasing to be an altarboy there. If this is
a reference to the composer - and Fallows offers reasons for optimism,
including Josquin's later contacts with this church - then it places him
during his teens in the same city as the elderly Du Fay, who was in
residence at Cambrai Cathedral from 1457 until his death in 1474. There
is at present no way of knowing how long Josquin may have been an
altarboy at St-Géry, or whether he stayed on in Cambrai after 1466. The
first secure reference to him appears nearly ten years later and places him
roughly 1000 km from Cambrai, serving at the court of René d'Anjou in
Aix-en-Provence. Still, Fallows believes the St-Géry document increases
the likelihood that the 'Des Près' mentioned in a list of musicians in the
text of Loyset Compere's motet Omnium bonorum plena (composed probably
in the early 1470s, no later than 1474, possibly in connection with an event
in Cambrai) is Josquin.3
Some earlier writers had already noted the possible influence of Du Fay
on the Missa Uami Baudichon. Fallows actually finds a closer connection
between this mass and the first of the six anonymous Uhomme armé masses
in the Naples manuscript VI.E.40. But where he does see evidence of Du
Fay's influence is in Josquin's Alma redemptoris mater I Ave regina caelorum, a
work more often cited for the similarity between its opening measures and
those of Ockeghem's Alma redemptoris mater. Fallows observes that any
similarity between the two ends there, and that instead Josquin's 'chant
treatment and formal layout' recall Du Fay's late four-voice Ave regina
caelorum. Fallows cites a passage in Josquin's work (p. 39, Example 6) that
contains a long descending sequence of a sort unlike anything in Du Fay,
or indeed in the music of Ockeghem and his contemporaries; the dating he
proposes in the early 1470s invites considerable rethinking.
As he has done previously with Du Fay, Ciconia and Regis, Fallows
masterfully draws together disparate bits of documentary evidence relating
to Josquin, finding order in them in ways that intuitively make sense. He
is able to link up the composer's service at the court of René d'Anjou
(e. 1475-8; perhaps until 1480) with his possible service at the Sainte-
Chapelle in Paris during the reign of Louis XI (perhaps 1480-3). While for
the latter there is no direct evidence, Fallows is surely right to suspect that

"* For arguments against identifying this "Des Près" with Josquin, see Joshua Rifkin, 'Compere,
"Des Près", and the Choirmasters of Cambrai: Omnium bonorum plena Reconsidered', Acta
musicologica, 81 (2009), pp. 55-73. Rifkin also offers reasons for doubting any connection
between Compere's motet and Cambrai.

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a benefice Josquin held in the parish of St- Aubin in the diocese of Bourges
was the result of contact with the French king. Here as elsewhere in the
book he revisits anecdotes about Josquin recounted by later writers, in part
for any clues these might hold to the dating of specific works. One is the
famous story of Josquin composing a setting of the psalm Memor esto verbi tui
servo tuo as a way of reminding the king of France of his unfulfilled promise
of a benefice. Fallows, noting Glareanus's description of the event as
having taken place before Josquin had become generally known, suggests
the king in question was not, as Glarean has it, Louis XII (whose reign
began in 1498, by which time Josquin was presumably very well known),
but rather Louis XI. This in turn leads him to propose a date for Memor esto
of 1480-1. Here again, Fallows throws down the gauntlet: technical and
stylistic features of the work may cause some to reject such an early dating,
especially in the light of Joshua Rifkin's recent observation that the use of
paired duos and transposed imitation (both present in Memor esto) is
comparatively rare until near the end of the fifteenth century.4
Fallows acknowledges his debt to Rifkin by dedicating the volume to
him. Rifkin's work on Josquin looms large, particularly his recent article on
the dating of Ave Maria . . . virgo serena, in which he discusses the sources and
authenticity of works Fallows assigns to about 1480 or earlier.5 Fallows is
candid about the many points on which they disagree. One of these
concerns the Casanatense songbook (Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS
2856), copied in Ferrara and containing four works ascribed to Josquin, as
well as two more with ascriptions that have been read as garbled versions
of the composer's name. The sticking point is the date of the manuscript.
Fallows continues to favour c. 1480, Rifkin c. 1490, with no consensus in
sight. Much hinges on this. A date of around 1480 would make this the
earliest source for any of Josquin's music. It would also lend support to
Fallows's suggestion that Josquin, while serving at Rene's court in the late
1470s, was already composing canonic songs such as Une musqué de Biscaye
'as part of a series of experiments to explore what could be done about
imitation as a structural device' (p. 73).
With Josquin's arrival in Italy now traceable no earlier than 1484, when
he is named as a member of the household of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza,
Milan has faded in significance as an element in the composer's biography
(in part because Ascanio spent most of the following few years in Rome).
This raises questions about Josquin's motet cycles Vultum tuum and Qui
velatus facie, which previously seemed to link him to the Milanese practice

4 Joshua Rifkin, 'A Black Hole? Problems in the Motet around 1500' (conference paper
presented in Bangor, 2007; currently in press).
5 Joshua Rifkin, 'Munich, Milan, and a Marian Motet: Dating Josquin's Ave Maña . . . virgo serena',
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 56 (2003), pp. 239-350.

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of motetti missales. While admitting the two cycles show an awareness of

what Compère and Weerbeke were writing in Milan in the 1470s, Fallows
sees no justification for insisting that Josquin composed these works
specifically for Milan. As part of his broader argument that after
composing the Missa Uami Baudichon Josquin effectively abandoned the
cyclic mass for nearly twenty years, Fallows views Vultum tuum and Qui
velatus facie as evidence of his interest in finding 'new ways of creating an
extended musical design' (p. 119).
Recent archival findings have shortened Josquin's service in the papal
chapel by three years, but it remains clear he was in Rome from 1489 until
at least 1494 (the relevant records are missing for the years 1495-1500,
after which time his name no longer appears). One consequence of this
revision to the biography, according to Fallows, is that we should now
'resist seeing the time in the papal chapel as quite so central to his career
and output' (p. 10). This view stems partly perhaps from Fallows's belief
that Josquin spent part of the years 1485-8 at the royal court of Hungary.
Yet by his own account the 1490s must have been years of extraordinary
productivity, resulting in the five complex mass cycles that Petrucci would
publish a few years later in his first book of masses, as well as his setting of
the tract Domine non secundum peccata, a work that all agree must have been
composed specifically for the papal chapel. Less certain now is whether the
five-voice tenor motet Illibata Dei virgo nutrix, with the composer's name
embedded as an acrostic, dates from these years. The earlier of its two
sources is the papal manuscript Cappella Sistina 15, copied in the
mid- 1490s, which also includes comparable five-voice motets by Johannes
Regis (the much earlier Clangat plebs flores) and Weerbeke (Dulcis arnica Dei,
almost certainly from 1486, when the composer was in the papal chapel).
From this it has been reasonably inferred that in the 1480s and 1490s there
was a special interest in such motets at the papal chapel. Fallows notes,
however, that the new biography opens up possibilities beyond assigning
the motet to Josquin's time in either Milan or Rome, and it is true that
Illibata reveals a strong awareness of Regis' s motets of the 1470s (Clangat
plebs flores in particular). Nevertheless the stylistic and technical features of
Illibata do not suggest a date as early as the late 1470s. I am inclined still
to place it among his Roman works and to see it as an example of Josquin
responding to a specific musical environment.
The period 1494-1503 - that is, from the last available documentation
of him in the papal chapel to his arrival in Ferrara as a member of Èrcole
d'Este's chapel - is the last in Josquin's life about which there is genuine
uncertainty concerning his whereabouts. After his year in Ferrara (1503-4)
he appears to have gone more or less immediately to Condé to take up the
provostship at the church of Notre Dame, a post he held until his death in
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1521. If there are disappointingly few documents from the last seventeen
years of his life, the responsibilities and residency requirements of the
provostship effectively guarantee that, except for occasional short trips, he
was in Condé throughout this period. But part of the frustration of the late
1490s is that there are numerous scattered records that might or might not
refer to the composer. Fallows weighs the reliability of these in turn. On
the basis of documents recently discovered by Rob Wegman that mention
'ung chantre nommé Josquin des Prez' being given wine by the chapter of
Troyes Cathedral during visits there in 1499 and 1501, Fallows makes an
attractive case for Josquin having been involved somehow with Louis XII
of France in these years.
With fewer biographical and archival knots to untangle for Josquin's
years in Ferrara and Conde, Fallows is able to devote nearly half of the
final hundred pages of his main text to discussing aspects of specific works.
These include some of the most famous pieces of the early sixteenth
century, but again and again his comments include fresh observations
that highlight the works' salient features. Questions of dating and
attribution do not vanish altogether. He advocates for Josquin's authorship
of Mille regretz and offers a relatively early dating of the Missa Fange lingua
('from around 1510') as part of a broader claim that Josquin's last years
were 'devoted largely to exploring small forms, particularly in five voices'
(p. 323).
Backing away from the details of his career, does the new documenta-
tion of Josquin's life provide us with a clearer picture of the composer
himself? Some of the surviving anecdotes suggest a wilful, perhaps even
difficult and arrogant man. Fallows refines this image by noting that the
land and property Josquin inherited from his aunt and uncle in 1483 made
him 'a rich man, certainly rich enough not to have needed to worry about
employment. That may help to explain some odd facts of his later life: the
way in which he moved from place to place, his contacts with the rich and
mighty, the ease with which he seems later to have slipped into his position
as provost at Condé' (p. 106). It is an appealing observation. Many court
musicians must have chafed at being treated like servants; Josquin may at
times have enjoyed the luxury of not having to serve at all if he did not
wish to.
Fallows's book is in every way a remarkable achievement. As with so
much of his published research it is also designed to be of maximum utility
to other scholars. Here one must take special note of its 115 pages of
appendices, which offer (a) an annotated list of the relevant documents; (b)
a long list of references to Josquin in musical, theoretical and literary texts
covering the period c. 1470-1777; (c) a detailed list of personalia; (d) an
annotated list of musicians called Josquin; and (e) another list of people
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called Desprez or similar. Simply put, these appendices alone constitute a

major contribution to Josquin studies. The book as a whole is elegant, both
visually and intellectually, and the depth of Fallows's scholarship ensures
that it will occupy a central place in all future research on the composer
and his music.
Sean Gallagher
Boston University

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